The present invention generally relates to a thin film forming method and system, and more particularly to a thin film forming method and system suitable for fabricating a disk-shaped recording media provided in a disk storage device frequently used as an external storage device of a data processing device.
A disk storage device is widely used in a computer system. Particularly, a magnetic hard disk has a large storage capacity. A magnetic hard disk has a disk-shaped base having thin films made of a magnetic material on both sides thereof. In order to obtain uniform characteristics of thin films on each disk-shaped base, it is particularly necessary to uniformly grow the thin films on both the sides of the disk-shaped base. In addition, it is necessary to produce magnetic hard disks having almost the same characteristic in commercial quantity.
The growth of the thin films on the disk-shaped base by use of a vacuum apparatus depends on various film growth conditions, such as the temperature of the disk base, the film growth pressure, the amount of flowing a gas and the attainability of vacuum. Particularly, the characteristics of thin films are greatly affected by the temperature of the disk base.
A conventional thin film forming system (manufactured by, for example, NICHIDEN ANERUBA, Japan) has a heating means, such as a lamp heater, for heating disk bases so that the temperatures of the disk bases are maintained at a predetermined temperature. Normally, a group of a plurality of disk bases held by a holder is heated together by the lamp heater and then inserted into a vacuum room of the vacuum apparatus. Then, a thin film growing process is carried out for the disk bases of the same group one by one. Thus, the temperatures of the disk bases obtained when the sputtering process is respectively carried out for the disk bases one by one are greatly different from each other. The above fact causes differences of characteristics of the magnetic disks.